We scan the menu prices of a restaurant and in the end buy some bread and slices of sausage. We hesitate in front of the cheese, it’s too expensive.
The woman who runs the Saint Lucy guest house with her husband takes her time registering the information from our passports. She’s also slow to browse through the blank pages, as if she were trying to decide whether to rent us the room or not. It’s half board. Occasionally, she looks up to inspect us. On the table beside her stands the statue of a haloed woman who in her outstretched hand holds out her eyes on a plate. I glance at D.J. Johnsson and wonder if he’s trying to imagine what the woman is thinking; is she maybe wondering whether he will be lying on top of his wife tonight?
While the woman busies herself with the paperwork, we scan our surroundings.
In the dining room a television blares at full volume: four stations, explains the woman who is keeping one eye on us and holds up four fingers. The set radiates a blue glow onto the street. On the tables are chequered tablecloths and plastic flowers in vases, and the chairs have been arranged so that everyone can see the television screen while they’re eating. I flaunt the wedding ring and in the end the woman hands my husband a key to a room with light green walls. The cold bedclothes are damp and the wardrobe is full of hangers. My husband hangs his jacket on one of them, unbuttons his shirt and lies on the bed. The sound carries well in the heat: a conversation from two floors below us can be heard as if it were being whispered into our ears, somewhere down on the street a man is singing. I open the shutters in front of the window, the street is so narrow that one can barely catch a glimpse of the sky, the guest house’s bedsheets are hanging out to dry on a line that stretches across the street.
“You can marry another man later,” I hear from the bed.
I turn around.
“I don’t want another man,” I say.
I lie on the bed beside him.
“You’re the only man who places no demands on me.”
He lies with his arms stretched down by his sides. With upturned palms. I stroke the lifeline with my finger. It’s powerful but ends abruptly.
“Do you think we’ll survive this?” he asks.
“Yes, we will.
“If not the two of us, then another two.”
He stands up.
“I’ve written to Mum and told her I’m a married man.”
My dear Hekla,
I hope you won’t resent me writing to you because you still have and will always have a place in my heart. I hope this is the right address—I got it from Ísey.
The last time I wrote to you, the letter was returned to me with “not at this address” written on the envelope. Now I’m relieved you didn’t get that letter because it was too mawkish. It had been written soon after you’d sailed away and there was too much moaning in it. My thoughts were all about you. My circumstances have changed since then and I’ve met a girl from Mýrdalir and have started driving a taxi. I’ve stopped writing poetry because I have nothing to say. Now I drive poets home from bars. More often than not I work twelve-hour shifts and sometimes weekends too. I heard about your manuscript in Mokka. Áki Hvanngil had read it as well as some others. Áki got the manuscript from one of his sister’s neighbours who knows the publisher’s reader. There’s one thing I want to say to you, Hekla: you have a gift. You have courage. Even though I’m no longer a poet, I can recognize writing talent when I see it.
I’ll never forget you.
Your eternal friend,
STARKADUR PJETURSSON
A hole has appeared in the night
My husband has one pillow and I the other, but we share the same sheet. Sometimes we both lie on our backs or he lies on his back and I lie on my stomach, other times we turn our backs on each other. Occasionally I hold him like a sister holds a brother or he holds me like a friend holds a friend. He doesn’t leave a hand clutching the woman’s breast on the other side of the bed. Nevertheless, when I wake up, it takes a moment to remember that the male body lying beside me is one that only men are allowed to touch.
I wake up once during the night and my husband isn’t there. I fall asleep again and when I awaken he’s standing in the middle of the room and looking at me and smiling. He hands me a cup of coffee and a slice of cake. We help each other spread the clammy, crumpled sheet, stretch it over the mattress and then tuck in the corners.
The sky is as blue as yesterday and D.J. Johnsson suggests we go and take a look at an old church. There’s a damp smell inside like in an old potato larder. D.J. walks ahead of me and halts in front of a painting of a young man with golden locks spilling over his shoulders, with his hands tied behind his back and his eyes gazing up at the heavens. A multitude of arrows pierce his stunning body.
I rest my head on D.J. Johnsson’s shoulder.
“You can’t get close to a saint without burning your fingertips,” I say.
He contemplates the work.
“I wish I were normal, Hekla. I wish I weren’t me.”
When we get back, the woman tells us a room has been freed on the other side of the guest house with a view of the hills. She says she’s willing to give it to us because we’re on our honeymoon. She was sitting at the television with her husband, both when we left and when we return, and I notice that she asks him if he wants some peach as she holds out a
